"The Square" Extra credit assignment: Jacob Keller

When I first saw this revolution take place on Television I was so confused.  I had no idea what everyone was so worked up about or what the big Idea was.  I thought it was just a bunch of people trying to work against a system.  This Documentary has really opened my eyes and mind on the situation.  It has explained, and more importantly shown,  what these people live and die for in Egypt.  I thought that this documentary was very well made in that it follow a very solid story line and had nice breaks where they explain and show a transition between time or developments in the revolution and the political government of Egypt.  I also like how they were able to capture military leader's responses to the revolution and their take on the situation as seen from the major and the general.  The only weakness that I observed in the film is it did not exactly address if there was any kind of leader ship or organization or system to the revolution.too

After watching the documentary I read a few articles on line that cover what the situation in Egypt is today.  What I have read is that as it currently stands there still is a semi-presidential republic in Egypt and the president leading it is Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who was formerly the head of military intelligence under the rule of Mubarak.  The revolution sadly is starting to lose steam as more people are tired of the killing and are starting to look for stability as opposed to a fight for freedom.  So far the only thing that has really changed is who is in charge of the country.  Some of the biggest challenges for the revolution is being able to get a leader of the people into the seat of power since so far only current politicians have been able to get in to presidency, many who are of the regime.

The way social media played a role in the uprising was it allowed the sharing of thoughts and spontaneous organization and quick execution of commands.  I saw in the documentary that people were not armed with guns but cameras, taking pictures and videos of all the action: police brutality, military aggression, the protests.  Also we saw it used for communication early we see Egyptians on YouTube and other video sites calling out to other Egyptians to gather at the square to start the up rise and we see the actor in the film talk to his father multiple times through Skype.  Some other movements where we see the use of social media are Ai Weiwei in China who uses online blogs to collect other fellow Chinese and hold discussions about dissent towards the Chinese governments actions and policies.  What I learned from all of this is that words are very powerful.  A few thousand people in Egypt spoke out and suddenly a man with great power just steps down.  With determination and strong message to the masses anything is possible

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-30381292 - here is an article I read